


silver polish

by KicktheMatt



Category: Dragalia Lost (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, why do i hurt every character i love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-14 20:46:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17515625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KicktheMatt/pseuds/KicktheMatt
Summary: a quick character study of best circus boywarning: sad.





	silver polish

Silver polish burns the nostrils, the hands, the back of the throat. It had adverse health effects. Despite this, Fritz still demands he spends hours a day cleaning off the knives.

They are the boon and bane of his existence-- he still remembers obtaining every single one of them. He remembers the wonder he had when he was young to be finally holding such a utensil, then shattered that same day when the knives flew from his palm. He remembers how they sounded, how the punctures popped in his ears, how flesh meeting silver points felt, even from yards away. Fritz remembers obtaining the knives; he remembers every life they have taken as well.

Someone’s knife has to hit first, and many times it was Fritz’s.

One knife down, nine to go.

He can’t count the houses, the palaces, the fortresses, the shops he had infiltrated in the past and the people his knives have hit during his time as a thief. He can’t count the hundreds of thousands of coins he had snatched or the precious items he had collected with sticky fingers, sticky palms, now burning with the polish on the rag as he cleans off another knife. Fritz likes to imagine the burning being the lashings he should’ve received for his past profession-- a reminder that _I’m supposed to be bad_ and _I’m supposed to be evil_ and _why doesn’t anyone think I’m disgusting? Why does everyone love me? Why did Annelie take me in? I’m awful. I’m a travesty._

Granted, he needed the knives to live. He developed his accuracy to live. Many times his life was dependent on a single throw, an amount of time equating to a few seconds in which he either threw a knife or his life away. If he missed, it was all over. If he hit, it was over for someone else.

It gets hard to consciously live knowing that the very knives that bring joy to some at one point brought death to others. Fritz doesn’t even understand how he lives with himself. Were his eyes burning from the fumes?

Tears burn in a way similar to silver polish, similar to knives. Three knives down.

He takes the time when he’s polishing his knives to reflect on those that were killed by them. He hopes, deep down, that maybe they forgive him. That whatever god or goddess out there will grant him some sort of salvation. That he won’t go immediately to hell when he finally passes. That part of him is selfish-- he knows he doesn’t deserve any of that. He’s selfish for even dreaming that he won’t be going down, down. It makes him almost wish there were no afterlife, so that he wouldn’t suffer.

He still does, though, he always will. As long as he wields knives and as long as he throws, as long as he polishes them daily and as long as he burns his fingers until they’re red on the rag, he will suffer. He’ll remember their faces, he’ll remember their final words. 

Maybe silver polish will kill him before anything else can.


End file.
